Black Hills1876

Additions

• Life on the plains:
  • Families live in every camp and village: Lakota women, men and girls, and settler men, women and boys. They cook at the pot and over the fire, gather, eat, talk, sit and play.
  • When enemies come near, the grown-ups run for the lodges and cabins and fight back from the doorways, and the children run off the map. Villagers can be killed, but their deaths count for nothing on the scoreboard.
  • Herds of bison, wild mustangs, elk and deer graze, wander, go down to water, lie down and bolt from people and gunfire. Right-click one with troops selected to shoot it. Nothing is gained by it.
• New ways to play:
  • Army Battles: no flags. Wipe out the enemy army or hold its camp for 60 seconds.
  • Historical Battles with the day's real forces and objective, playable from either side.
  • Quick Battle, with every setting picked at random.
  • A Tutorial that walks you through one step at a time.
• A new campaign:
  • The campaign atlas: three period map sheets (Northern Plains, Colorado & South Platte, Northern Cheyenne Return) with 122 historical entries in four chapters from 1853 to 1879, and 72 place names such as Bear Lodge and Pine Ridge.
  • Massacres, raids and other events are told as history only, never fought. Each main battle has at least one optional fight before it.
  • Choose your side, your story, your rank (Captain, Major or Colonel; Warrior, Headman or War Chief) and your commander.
  • Buy your army with gold, then grow and train your companies on an army screen where you raise them like buying cards. A company wiped out is gone for good.
• 66 battlefields built from real elevation, rivers and land cover. 17 mountain maps have two or three levels of high ground, with rock cliffs and wooden stairs up.
• Added Fort Laramie for the Platte Ferry fight: walls, four bastions, a lookout, stairs and a gate that opens as men come near. Men on the walls fire over the parapet with 50 to 65% cover from shots below. Right-click a wall to line your squads along it.
• Added eight commanders, each with two skills. His portrait in the top bar speaks after a skill and turns angry when resolve runs low:
  • George Custer, George Crook, Alfred Terry and Marcus Reno
  • Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Little Wolf and Dull Knife
• New units:
  • Army: Field Gun, Coehorn Mortar, the mounted General, the mounted Bannerman, and Scouts (four cavalry troopers and a Crow scout)
  • Lakota & Cheyenne: Long Rifles and Scouts (five mounted men)
• Rank troops and rank skills:
  • Army foot squads gain a Bannerman at rank 2 and a Major at rank 3.
  • Lakota and Cheyenne bands learn a skill and gain two warriors at rank 2, and a Chieftain on a white pony joins at rank 3.
  • 11 rank skills: Rally on the Colours, Fire by Rank, Draw Sabres, Circle Fire, Massed Arrows, Look Out, Sash Stake, Circle Ride, Counting Coup, Steady Aim and War Whoop.
• Bigger armies:
  • Company sizes: infantry 10 to 100, horse 5 to 50, and up to 5 guns in a battery.
  • Battalions (bands on the Lakota side) of four companies each, bound to control groups 1 to 4.
• New orders:
  • Formations: right-press and drag to line up the selected squads, with rings showing where every man will stand. A Formation menu offers Line, Column, Skirmish order and Square.
  • Right-click an enemy to fire on it. Double right-click to charge in hand to hand.
  • Standing orders: right-click a skill and the squad uses it whenever an enemy is in reach, while ammunition lasts.
  • Firing arcs: hold the right button to see each squad's sight and field of fire. Field guns and mortars must turn to aim (cannon 60 degrees, mortar 90).
  • Call-up (U): spend ammunition and fresh squads march in from your edge of the map, the Relief Column or the Allied Band. 3 minutes between uses.
  • Order arrows: hover a squad to see where it is going and who it is shooting at.
  • Kneeling: men close behind cover, and the front rank of a line, fire from one knee. Hold the right button on cover and drag to set which way they face.
  • Trenches give 75% cover from every side, and men in them stay hidden until they fire.
• New controls:
  • Control groups (Ctrl+1 to 9) and card groups: hold a card (or right-click it) to put it in a group, then tap the Group bar to select them all.
  • Halt and Group / Ungroup buttons, and a close button on the selected-squad panel.
  • On touch, hold a finger on open ground and drag to draw a line, and double tap an enemy to send the selected riders in.
• A briefing before every battle with the date, the story, both armies drawn on the field, and a large Objectives heading with the goal in one or two lines.
• Clearer ways to win:
  • Hold the fords: each side has a 3:00 timer that runs down while it holds more fords than the enemy. The first to reach 0:00 wins.
  • To the last man: the first side to bring the enemy's troop count to 0 wins.
  • Break their resolve: every flag you hold drains the enemy's resolve, the more flags the faster. Starred fords count double.
• A bar along the bottom with the map, the selected squad and your squad cards. One bar across the top holds stores, resolve, each side's dead, and the camp and pause buttons. Select the camp (or press H) for the muster roll, and a box at the top left shows squads being raised.
• New art:
  • New art for every unit, with longer, clearer weapons, the kick of every shot and reloading after it, standing, on the march, and Army riders at the gallop.
  • The War Leader shoots a bow at range and a revolver up close, on foot and on horseback, and fires the revolver at the gallop.
  • Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors fight side by side in mixed bands: Lakota in pale buckskin, Lakota bowmen in blue trade cloth, Cheyenne in ochre, Cheyenne riders in grey-blue.
  • Gun crews push the field gun and carry the mortar. Horse tails stream at the gallop and riders are thrown clear.
  • Muzzle flashes and powder smoke after every shot. Guns blow out a bigger cloud, and shells leave dark smoke where they land.
  • Weapon icons for every company, crossed-arms badges for battalions and bands, and a portrait on every squad card.
• New ground and scenery:
  • Skirmish fields: Buffalo Plains, Pumpkin Buttes, Deep Timber, Fort on the Platte, Red Cloud Agency and Settler's Cabin.
  • Rivers, braided fords, lakes and side creeks.
  • Elms in four seasons, cactus, cattails, campfires with smoke, tumbleweeds, dust devils, crates, hay, fences, wells and wagon wheels. Trees sway a little in the wind.
  • The Lakota camp and the villages stand in a ring open to the east, every tipi with its own size, hide colour and painted band.
  • Border land round every field, so the bars never hide the edge of the battlefield.
• Music and sound:
  • Music: "Red Cloud Under Fire" on the menus and "Frontier Dawn 1876" in battle.
  • A drill sergeant: "Attention!", "Forward march!" and "Fall back on the double, men!", with marching stomps.
  • New guns: three Springfield takes that never repeat twice running, the Sharps rifle, the Colt 1873, new cannon and mortar fire, two bow sounds and a new blade strike.
  • Galloping horses, the bugle call "To Arms", wind gusts on the open plains and a forest soundscape on wooded maps.
  • Sounds pan with their place on screen and fade as you scroll away.
• A new main menu: New Game (New Campaign, Quick Battle, Skirmish, Tutorial), Continue Campaign, Load Game, Options, Help and Support and Credits, over a slow pan across the atlas and a battle of two long Army firing ranks charged by hundreds of mounted warriors.
• Options for Audio & Graphics, Gameplay and Controls, with colour-blind colours that turn the Lakota & Cheyenne orange.

Tweaks/Improvements

• Balance:
  • Every unit moves about 30% slower than at first release.
  • Firearms reload 20% slower and bows 15% slower. Sharpshooters, Long Rifles and guns reload 10% faster with each rank.
  • Horsemen are tougher: Mounted Cavalry 140 -> 161 hp, Horse Warriors 72 -> 87 hp.
  • Rifle Warriors, Bow Warriors and Dog Soldiers are 15 strong. The Cavalry Troop is now the Dismounted Cavalry Troop: 10 men, 75 hp.
  • Manpower comes in 40% faster, every price is 20% lower, and stores now hold up to 5000 manpower, ammunition and horses.
  • Fords no longer pay manpower. Small rocks, tufts, lone barrels and cactus no longer count as cover.
  • Mortar crews see 50% farther. Field guns and mortars take 2 seconds to set up and 2 to pack up, and a battery is one unit with its crews.
• Movement:
  • Troops march in column on long moves and stand in a line when they halt. Squads sent to the same place line up side by side.
  • Squads ordered together sort themselves: foot in front, guns behind, cavalry at the back.
  • A squad captures a flag when any living man of it stands in the ring.
  • A squad chasing a target into the fog halts, and attack orders keep after a target for 2.5 seconds when it slips out of sight.
• Touch:
  • Tap a squad to select it, tap again to let it go, tap the ground to march and tap an enemy to attack.
  • Squad cards: tap selects, tap again lets go, double tap centres the view, and dragging a card onto the field moves or attacks.
• Men hiding in grass, timber or trenches are seen only by enemies in the same patch, or by Scouts, who spot hidden men for the whole side.
• Historical objectives read as Kill the enemy (with the number left), Hold the named places, or Survive until the timer runs out. A hold timer pauses when you lose a place, and Survive needs only one man left.
• Maps are 25% bigger, roads appear only where one really ran, and skirmish battlefields are grouped by chapter.
• Army tents face their company street.
• The skull on a squad card shows only when the whole squad is wiped out. Losing a flag plays a sound.
• The map scrolls when the pointer reaches any edge of the window. Esc goes back on every menu and opens or closes the pause box.
• Atlas place names are larger, with a parchment outline, and no longer overlap. Sources moved to the Credits.
• Much less small print, a shorter How to play, and lower overall volume.
• Removed the Officer & Bugler and the Wolf Scouts on foot; the new Scouts take their place.

Bug fixes

• Fixed squads stacking on one spot and new men at camp crowding onto the same place.
• Fixed right-click attacks sometimes turning into formation drags.
• Fixed spear warriors flicking between walking and standing in hand to hand fighting.
• Fixed tapping the camp flag on a tablet sending the selected soldiers there instead of opening the camp.
• Fixed the War Leader's band showing the wrong card.
• Fixed the Campaign screen's Back button doing nothing, and the army screen showing two Back buttons.
• Fixed Terry's Steamer Far West bringing no men when stores were already full.
• Fixed men bouncing between the fort stairs and the yard.